In 1979, the Sichuan Association for Science and Technology founded a popular science magazine called "Science Literature and Art", which is the predecessor of today's "Science Fiction World" magazine.
Everyone must pay attention to the five words "Sichuan Association for Science and Technology", otherwise you will not be able to understand the true status of "Science Fiction World". In recent years, this magazine has become vaguely authoritative as a "national science fiction magazine" in the minds of science fiction enthusiasts. Once, "Science Fiction King" magazine invited local science fiction fans in Taiyuan to have a discussion. Those invited science fiction fans whispered privately: Will the "headquarters" be angry when they find out? Liu Xianghui from Henan spent his own money to run "Science Fiction Shorts", and some readers wrote to ask: Did you get approval from "Science Fiction World" for running this magazine? Even some knowledgeable people who know China's press and publication management system don't know the truth. The year before last, the author participated in a science fiction seminar at the China Science Popularization Institute. At the meeting, an editor from the China Film Publishing House asked: Why did the China Association for Science and Technology put such a "national" science fiction magazine in Sichuan?
In addition, everyone should also know that under China's planning system, each province must publish a popular science publication, such as "Science Pictorial" in Shanghai and "Big Science and Technology" in Hainan. If you cannot find a popular science publication in your province, it is basically because its circulation is too small. "Science Literature and Art" was originally launched as a provincial science popularization publication under Sichuan Province.
In that era, science fiction and popular science were inseparable. Even the national organization of Chinese science fiction writers is called the "Chinese Science Popularization Writers Association" and continues to this day. At that time, "Science Literature and Art" was full of popular science articles, biographies of scientists, and of course a large number of science fiction novels. At that time, many popular science publications and even purely literary publications were publishing science fiction novels. "Science and Literature" is just more concentrated. At that time, publications with the same style as it included "Science Fiction Ocean" in Beijing, "Wisdom Tree" in Tianjin, "Science Times" and "Science Fiction Newspaper" in Heilongjiang. It was called the "four publications and one newspaper" of Chinese science fiction.
In that era when everything was waiting for improvement, "Science and Literature" easily reached a circulation of 200,000 copies. The same goes for several other science fiction newspapers and periodicals. But soon, political and market pressures came together, and other companies were unable to resist and were defeated. The last one to go bankrupt was Tianjin's "Wisdom Tree" in 1986.
Under pressure, the Sichuan Association for Science and Technology made Science and Literature responsible for its own profits and losses. This is an important change. Since then, the magazine has slowly become a "red hat enterprise": in the name of a national publication, it is actually a joint-stock private enterprise, and its bosses are several major shareholders in the magazine. This is something Chinese science fiction fans should know, otherwise you will have no way of understanding the basis of many of its practices. It has flexibility that state-owned publishing units cannot have, and it also has a desire for market monopoly that ordinary state-owned publishing units cannot have.
Without a mother-in-law, on the one hand, there is no backing, and on the other hand, there are no constraints. At that time, the small magazine with less than ten people democratically elected its president, who is now Yang Xiao. In addition to Yang Xiao's ability, her identity as the daughter of the former Sichuan Provincial Party Committee Secretary was also an important factor in her election. Objectively speaking, if it were not for this shield, the only line of Chinese science fiction would cease to exist. Then the revival of Chinese science fiction in the 1990s will be more difficult than it is now because of the lack of core. Under Yang Xiao's leadership, the magazine held the World Science Fiction Conference, changed the magazine's style, and so on. These "Science Fiction Worlds" themselves have a lot of written propaganda, so I won't say more. There is one fact I can tell friends who yearn for heroism: the lowest circulation issue of "Science Fiction World" was only 700 copies. Today it's hundreds of thousands. From this perspective alone, it is indeed a business hero.
At that time, the decision-making level of the science fiction world mainly consisted of four people: Yang Xiao, Tan Kai, Xiang Jichun, and Mo Shuqing. Xiang Jichun was the head of the art editor at the time and was also a planner. Old readers must also know that in 1994 and 1995, "Science Fiction World" was like today's "Science Fiction King", half text and half cartoons.
Two days before the 1997 World Science Fiction Conference, the Chinese Science Writers Association held a national science fiction symposium in a scenic spot outside Beijing.
Including Zheng Wenguang, the "Father of Chinese Science Fiction", three generations of authors, old, middle and young, gathered together to discuss the prospects for the development of China's science fiction industry. But no one from the nearby "Science Fiction World" magazine went. A reporter asked a senior leader from "Science Fiction World" at that time about the relationship between that conference and this conference (Beijing World Science Fiction Conference). The leader said simply that the two sides are not the same faction! This conversation took place in front of the author.
Of course, there are many facts to illustrate that in today's increasingly open era, the senior leaders of "Science Fiction World" have been trying in vain to make Chinese science fiction the world of their own family. It’s just that those things involve the interests of other people or cannot be verified at the moment, so I will not write them here.
The author once heard a senior science fiction fan say that "Science Fiction World" is the "Yan'an" of Chinese science fiction. Of course, with the education of facts, he no longer has this illusion today. The author wrote the above paragraph in the hope that more science fiction fans will not have illusions about the idols they have established themselves. Science fiction requires imagination, but science fiction is also a very realistic existence. If you can think about it this way